A lot of people, particularly in BJJ training, comment that they seem to be doing worse in their second year of training than they were in their first. The same thing often happens in other areas of people’s lives – and it can be for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, particularly in the martial arts field, people who run professional schools, often start out by trying to monetize the thing they are passionate about. Wow – I love martial arts training – it’s what I live for. How great would it be to do this for a living. Then of course – when they need to pay the school rent, teach classes, day in, day out – the same old thing (not yours truly of course) – they become bored and disillusioned. The magic of martial arts training begins to evaporate as the bills keep coming and they find themselves teaching twenty classes a week just to make ends meet. They are doing more of what they love – they are even getting better at it – but they are feeling decidedly worse!
These people have forgotten the most important thing – they have forgotten to keep INVESTING in their own training and development. Rule number one – KEEP THE PASSION ALIVE!
The other common reason that people often do better but feel worse is because they are making the wrong comparisons. They compare how they are doing with how other people are doing and not how they are doing NOW with how they were doing THEN.
This often happens on the BJJ mat. The complaint comes back – hey, it’s as hard now as it was a year ago; I’m not getting better! Obviously, what is wrong with that statement is that it is based on the fact that they are comparing their performance with their classmates (WHO HAVE ALSO BEEN TRAINING HARD) instead of comparing their current performance with their performance of a year ago. Comparing ourselves with others IS NOT a way to happiness and fulfillment.
Train Hard – Train happily.
JBW
